


The Road is Too Long

by searein



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Road Trips, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Loop, Van Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 22:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12691803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/searein/pseuds/searein
Summary: “Josh,” Tyler clears his throat. “You know, sometimes I realize I don’t remember where we go. It’s creepy, isn’t it?”





	The Road is Too Long

The road is too long.   
  
This thought goes through his mind more and more often every day.  
  
Wealds, green forests, farms with herds of cows, lakes and mountains - everything is a mixed greased landscape, which they can see from their dusty van.   
  
And a swelter. A terrible heat that can melt the chocolate bar on the dashboard if they leave it there for less than an hour. Josh swears it can even make Red Bull boil but luckily Tyler always drinks all of it in the nearest two or three hours after buying it so they cannot check this statement.

The road is too long and sleeping at the steering wheel is dangerous.   
  
Tyler turns his head to Josh, who mutely points his finger on the fuel gauge and it looks as if he waits something from him, but honestly Tyler didn't hear his previous words.

"What?" he asks perplexedly.

“Fuel, Ty, we should stop at the nearest gas station.”

“Yeah-yeah, of course,” Tyler shakes his head to return into reality. Sometimes everything starts swimming but he knows – it’s just an optical phenomenon, a mirage or even a fata morgana maybe – he isn’t so good at it.

They have the same ritual near gas stations on the trip, but their duties are different.

Smashed mosquitoes and other insects, which were destined to die in this absurd way, cover the entire windscreen. And while Tyler is paying for the fuel Josh is cleaning it. He has to climb on the bonnet but that’s okay. Before the last drops of water flow down on the incandescent asphalt, Tyler comes back with supplies – snacks and drinks. Coffee to go is necessary too. They just drink it in the silence near the car, considering the grille, their small cemetery for the unlucky bees and flies and of course mosquitos.

“I officially refuse to pick it out,” Josh says, turns to Tyler, the halves of his sunglasses are glued together with the duct tape. It’s just impossible to see anything without them.

Tyler shrugs and says seriously, throwing the plastic cup into the nearest trashcan -

“Then you’ll be out of the band, Joshua,” and goes to the gas station bathroom. Josh smirks and follows him, taking their toothbrushes from the glove compartment.

Refreshing themselves in small WCs of the petrol stations is the last step of their everyday ritual.

The girl at the counter smiles at them when they come out of the small building and go to their car. As if they were doing something dirty instead of brushing their teeth and washing up. As if she knows everything about every random traveler at this place.

An endless series of the road signs greet Tyler when they are on their road again. The sun goes down and Josh is sleeping on the old mattress in the back part of the van. Tyler casts a glance on disheveled hair on the top of Josh’s head through the rear-view mirror from time to time. He wants to find a safe place near the road as fast as possible where he can stop the car and lay down near Josh, allowing himself to get rest too. The heat changes to the saving coolness and a silent chirr of cicadas only at nights.

***

When Tyler opens his eyes and Josh isn’t near, he knows that he is outside, lies on the almost cold bonnet, looking into the sky.

“Hey,” Tyler interrupts Josh’s meditation, getting out of the car and coming closer.

“Hey,” repeats Josh as if he doesn’t know what this word means. “Wanna join?”

“Sure,” Tyler climbs on the bonnet awkwardly and stares into the sky too.

“Josh,” Tyler clears his throat. “You know, sometimes I realize I don’t remember where we go. It’s creepy, isn’t it?”

“Oh c’mon, you know where we go, just… Tyler, this world is so big. And the trip takes more time than we planned. That’s all,” Tyler nods agreeing. He hugs Josh, cuddling to him. Only at this moment, Tyler realizes that Josh is still wearing his sunglasses.

He outstretches his hand to take them off.

“What are you doing?” Josh turns his head to Tyler but doesn’t stop him.

The road is too long and sometimes they need to take a break.

Sometimes they manage to find a suitable place for parking where no one will see the slightly swaying van with tinted windows. These nights a chirr of insects in the air mixes with moans. These nights the heat doesn't subside but increase and the skin slides against the wet skin and it’ll be nice to open the window but who wants to be bitten by the all the same damn mosquitos? So they’re suffocating, they’re melting like this infelicitous chocolate bar on the dashboard, boiling inside like an unfinished can of Red Bull on the floor. And for Tyler this is much better than anything else in this endless road trip.

But today is not that kind of night so they just talk about fireflies around them which can be called little terrestrial stars and Tyler allows Josh only to kiss him in the almost pure way for two adults. 

The horizon is barely brighten and the car is completely cold when Tyler tears himself away from Josh with a sigh and sits at the steering wheel.

“Ready?” he smiles, puts the sunglasses on, not being sure who owns them.

“Always,” replies Josh, pulling his seatbelt, and presses the play button on the car radio. 

***

But the road is endless for real.

Tyler tries to ask Josh for their destination but he only laughs. Indeed, how someone who drives the car cannot understand where they’re going? 

He starts to count turns of the road but quickly fails.

He is trying to find a map while Josh is sleeping but it just disappeared. Even the cashier at the gas station, who looks exactly like that girl with this I-know-everything smile, says they ran out of maps of this state. Tyler can swear that someone turns a buzz on in his ears on purpose so he cannot even hear in which state they are. 

They see a deer that was hit on the roadside again and again. When Tyler remarks the too high mortality of these creatures on the roads, Josh only shrugs his shoulders. As if it’s the first dead animal they see on the trip.

After a couple of days of increasing paranoia, Tyler even starts to predict something that repeats day after day. Like the next song on the radio, or that he’ll see behind the turn, even what Josh will do or say in some situations. It scares him shitless. He feels like he’s stuck in these foolish decorations and _the road will never end, the road will never end, the road will…_

Tyler rubs his eyes because this mirage appears again.

He almost shouts when the girl at the next petrol station smiles so fucking familiar. She has so familiar piercing, so familiar eyes, hair and even clothes so Tyler thinks she is just a well-made mannequin.

He cannot sleep anymore.

The panic seizes him and he tries to find an exit but Josh still just skips over his suspicions. Like if he is a part of this décor.

When they’re alone together, when Tyler sits on Josh’s lap and the hot hands grab him and loved lips draw him into the kiss he feels nothing but the plastic taste of fake.

***

The road is too long and it’s like an enormous treadmill, that just scrolling. Again and again, and after a week of this nightmare his only one desire is to _stop this run_.

And he does.

Tyler gets in the car, turning a steering wheel and drives away of the parking lot where they've stopped for the rest and where Josh went for buying some goods in a local store.

He leaves Josh behind, he cannot do any harm to him even if he’s not real.  

The road is too long and it’s time to stop it.

Tyler notices the abandoned storage that he’s seen so many times before. Same red roof, same broken windows in the same concrete walls. This will be his stop. This is his deliverance from a nauseating kaleidoscope of the identical days.

At some point, his fingers unclench by themselves, letting go of the steering wheel and his leg pushes the accelerator into the carpets.

After a few seconds, he'll turn out of the still half-alive bee which is seized-up in the grille into the smashed insect on the windshield.

He shuts his eyes a second before the collision.

And then Tyler drowns in the darkness.

***

He suddenly opens his eyes widely, clutching the armrest on the front door of the van, near the passenger seat. He breathes out, cannot calm down, when the familiar hand lays down on his shoulder. Tyler hears Josh’s voice.

“Are you okay? Sorry, I probably woke you up. Fucking holes. What do they spent our taxes on?” Tyler nods, grabs the bottle of water and takes a greedy sip. The heat is terrible.

“Just a nightmare,” he tries to remember his dream but he cannot. Tyler has a phantom feeling that it isn't the first time when he has this one.

He leans back and looks on the melting chocolate on the dashboard. He glances down, to the gauges and he notices that the fuel level is too low.

“Need a refuel,” says Tyler but there is no reaction from Josh. He is focused on the road too hard or just is in the depth of his own thoughts.

“Josh?”

Josh turns his head to Tyler, who mutely points his finger on the fuel gauge and it looks as if he waits something from him, but honestly, Josh didn't hear Tyler’s previous words.

"What?" he asks perplexedly.

“Fuel, Josh, we should stop at the nearest gas station.”

“Yeah-Yeah of course,” Josh shakes his head to return into reality.

And the road is _still_ too long.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> @tjstar thank you for the beta, your support and advice. dude you're the best.


End file.
